- Architecture
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Willesden Centre
Date: 2005
State-of-the art hospital
Client: Brent Primary Care Trust & Ptns
How do you build a brand new state-of-the art hospital on the site of an existing one which is still fully operational? Willesden Centre for Health and Care shows how with imaginative and careful design such a feat can be achieved. And the community gains 108 new homes in the process.
The new one-stop community healthcare facility replaces the 100-year-old Willesden Hospital and Pound Lane GP’s clinic. The challenge of ensuring there was no break in care for the community was overcome by designing the centre to take up only half the area occupied by the original hospital. Yet it provides a far greater and more accessible level of service.
The impressive array of facilities includes inpatient wards for older people and younger people with disabilities, outpatient and diagnostic services, a GP unit, a dental unit, community nursing, occupational, speech and physio-therapies, chiropody services, mental health services, women’s services, voluntary services and a children’s unit with audiology. There is also a café and a retail pharmacy.
The centre has been sensitively designed in two sections. The clinical element has the look of a modern hospital, whereas the inpatient wards for elderly people and younger people with disabilities are far more residential in character. This not only means that these units feel very homely, but it helps the whole building blend with the surrounding streetscape.
The remainder of the site has been earmarked for new housing. So the community benefits from a state-of-the-art hospital plus new, much needed homes and the client gains extra value from the land. Willesden Centre for Health and Care is surely a striking example of how good design can deliver superb cost-benefit returns for client and community alike.